#coffeebreak: sherbrooke
Today’s coffee break writing challenge. Free write for 10 minutes in response to the below image. Share an excerpt of the results in the comments at the bottom.
sherbrooke, originally uploaded by uwajedi.
No related posts.
Today’s coffee break writing challenge. Free write for 10 minutes in response to the below image. Share an excerpt of the results in the comments at the bottom.
sherbrooke, originally uploaded by uwajedi.
No related posts.
6 Comments
Sherbrooke, the name of the town hung in the air like particles of dust undergoing Brownian motion, slowly finding the influence of gravity, buffeted to and fro without obvious reason. It was exactly like that when she had said it. But who would want to work in a place like that, so far from friends, the city, modern society. “The place is a walking billboard for archaeology for Christ-sake!” he blurted out, and it was true. That phrase had the hallmark of honesty because he had so little time to disguise its true meaning. “Think of the money I can earn there” was all Lydia had to say. Looking into each others eyes and reading the intensity of the moment, they both knew it meant it was over between them. Life as they new it was about to change forever, again. It was only months earlier she had been hauling her life into two small suitcases and waving farewell. Life was always the big adventure with Lydia, but she never really understood the void left behind in her wake.
I can be without her, Thom thought to himself, just, it was the last thing in the world he actually wanted. So much had gone on since that day in the cafe when she casually sauntered past. So many revolutions of the earth. So many momentum changes within his heart. When they had met he really was pretty mixed up. But she had changed all that. She was the difference, she was the catalyst for his metamorphosis. It was a powerful thing. They were an amazing team. But she was willing to throw that all away. There must be more to it. There must be more, and Thom was determined to find out…
Eh, not particularly happy with what I produced for this one, but it was good to help me wake up this morning
sketch:
three blue seats. a train station, presumably. as nice as the composition is, the spacing of the seats is deliberate on the part of the designers. those spaces represent two things: the separation of people that sit on them so that personal space is respected, and a disincentive to homeless that might want to sleep on them. \i would imagine that they are very thini in the direction of the page.
three blue seats. three characters. three paragraphs. late at night. last train. one homeles that is waiting for the others to leave (last paragraph). one young woman finishing a bar job who is offended more by the other person than the homeless man. the other person is perhaps a bogan of some description, eying her up as she reads. see how it goes. their problem seems insignificant when given the contrast of the last paragraph. perhaps they are a couple, actually? perhaps don’t even mention the fact that the homless guy is there until they leave, highlighting our ability to ignore things swe don’t want to se k.
write:
The young man is confused; he has let the earbud closest to her hang down his tight, long-sleeved top, while angling the face of his iPod so that she can she he is playing the same song he caught a riff of from her player last week. And still she hasn’t spoken to him. She is pretty, and her smell–a barmaid’s heady mix of perfume, nicotine, and a spatter of liquor–entices him despite the weariness of her face.With an internal sigh he reaches down and retrieves the errant earbud, turning his thoughts towards the essay he must write upon his arrival home.
The young lady was enjoying the tinny echo of music from the earbud, had almost asked the guy if she could share it. But then her thoughts returned to the man who was her boyfriend, or fuck-buddy, or whatever it was when you were screwing your much-older boss. She lets the weight of the relationship close her eyes, opening them again only when the ringing screech of the train announces its impending arrival.
The train gathers the two up, and departs with a whisper of steel on steel.
As the station falls silent, the homeless man slumps sideways to lie on the seats, soaking up the latent heat of the passengers’ bottoms from the aluminium. His tattered jacket clings to his bony frame like skin; strips of fabric loll from places where the city’s claws have found purchase.
Some disjointed writing masquerading as poetry:
A criss-cross reality
Ordered and neat
The wall, like a mausoleum and
those blue, fucking, chairs just sitting there waiting
for you.
Doctors and trains and birthdays and cancers.
When you cut out all the waiting the highlights reel is thin.
The clack clack of the train tracks. The neon light spitting spitefully at the tiled walls. The ghosts of old commuters trailing briefcases behind them like sins.
You wonder about that wall, about the bodies within, about the smooth edges and the sterilized humanity and you guess it’s true: death is cleaner than life.
I thought I would do a Phill this time:
sketch
Start with the feeling of the chairs. Plastic, no metal. Overlapping bands of steel. Where is the station? Looks kind of European. Maybe I should look it up. Can’t be bothered. I remember that trains that passed through West Germany under the Berlin wall had their stations walled up. So that if you went down there you could hear ghost trains traveling through the walls. Who could be waiting for a train? Why are they waiting? It’s too obvious to be waiting for a train, what else could they be waiting for?
write
The steel beneath her thighs caught her anticipation in clouds of sweat breaking upon her skin. A CCTV camera kept watch on her from the corner. The last train had passed an hour ago. A busker was packing up in the entrance, the sound of his cymbals silenced by the closing of his suitcase. He glanced back at her as he dragged the case up the stairs, each jolt met with a muffled clash of the cymbals inside. Soon he was gone and it was quiet. The cold ricocheting off the tiled walls. And there it was. A faint rumble. The steel beneath her began to hum. No lights ahead on the tracks but the sound of a closing train. She stood up and leaned her body against the wall. Through her clothes she could feel the beveling where the wall had been re-plastered. The sound now a roar. She reached out for the vibration by putting her palms on the wall. It came like electricity through her bones. For a moment he was with her, going through her. And then it passed. Sherbrooke station fell silent. She collected her bag from the seat beside her. It was the closest they had been in two years.
Dan, love your poem mate. Did you want to hang it up on my poetry blog??? Maybe edit out the dirty word to make it rated for the general public…
Sure Benjamin, that’d be great!
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